


The Double-Edged Sword

by wickedorin



Category: Tiger & Bunny
Genre: AU, Androids, Angst, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-08
Updated: 2013-10-08
Packaged: 2017-12-29 21:22:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1010250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wickedorin/pseuds/wickedorin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written as a fill for a drabble request on AwaitingMassProduction: "Tomoe, Kotetsu, and H01 H01/Kotetsu/Tomoe; memories, love, loss; seeing another person’s memories, dealing with feelings for that person and feeling for one that they loved."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Double-Edged Sword

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, alright, there's sadness here... but the android remains optimistic.

He “remembered”, sometimes. Through vivid “dreams” of which he still didn’t really understand the inner workings of, or the reasons for. They were _dreams_ , pure and simple; pictures and experiences that were not currently happening outside of his sleep mode. Yet they were logged as events, as processes. Even he would admit that they were “strange”.  
  
That didn’t mean they happened with any less frequency over time, however. Just on occasion with seemingly no pattern, no trigger. Most were in regards to his own existence, his own experiences, good or bad. Some were just bizarre, and yet interesting. But then there were those which—  
  
Weren’t his. Not really. They were Kotetsu’s, from the small amount of time they had been linked. From those streams of data that had been recorded, transferred to him. There was joy sometimes, fear, triumph. But then there were the other ones. The terrible ones. Where he had learned the true costs of deep sadness, permanent loss… helpless anger that never really goes away.  
  
Humans died. He was aware of that, knew that as fact. Humans got sick, suffered, and eventually their bodies ceased functioning altogether. Entropy was absolute. He knew that _humans_ were aware of that, as well. And still somehow there was so much pain in these things, in broken connections. In the loss of someone so cherished, so—  
  
Loved. He loved her so dearly and so deeply that he would have given his life for her; but he preferred to _live_ for her. Striving to make her proud, to do right by her. He called her his everything, his guiding star. His purpose.  
  
Tomoe. The memories were not _his_ , but they were still so clear. How beautiful she was when she was alive, warm and breathing and _there_ , how endearing. How powerful she seemed even when she became more frail. The strongest of Kotetsu’s memories were the ones that he could best understand, the ones he could “recall”.  
  
She was almost a bit _frightening_ when she had been younger. When _they_ had been younger, inexperienced, everything new and frightening and enthralling. First kiss, first touch, first awkward pleasure and first desperate panicked apology—  
  
She’d laughed. She’d promised they’d get it right.  
  
They got it right. Very right, all of that pain seeming to just fall away with her incredibly sated smile when she held their daughter for the first time. Joy. The most sincere, pure joy. Hers. _Ours_.  
  
There was worry when she got sick. More worry when it didn’t stop. When she’d collapsed—  
  
Panic. Fear. Anger at doctors, at the world.  
  
Fear again. Feeling small, feeling stilted and unable to breathe, to move, trapped.  
  
Nightmare.  
  
Uncertainty. Anger. Remorse. Perhaps what was known as “heartbreak”; and those were simply the things that he could partially understand and identify. There was so much more, a _flood_ of thought and emotion in that moment—and yet stillness. It didn’t make sense, logically or otherwise; but there was a horrible stagnant stillness in that moment when Kotetsu realized that what he saw on that hospital bed was his diseased wife.  
  
Tomoe.  
  
Tomoe, who would never smile at him again. Never hold his hand again. Whisper sweet things, support him, rebuild shattered confidence.  
  
What would he tell Kaede?  
  
How would he ever _live_?  
  
He “remembered”—had partially “ _experienced_ "—Kotetsu repeating over and over again in his mind at the funeral, referring to the body laying motionless, "That’s not my wife." That, biting the inside of his cheek and keeping his fist clenched hard enough for his fingernails to draw blood from his palm were the only things keeping him from wailing. At first. By the time the coffin was being carried off…  
  
There was nothing. Blankness. Numb, airless, vacuum. It was that way for a long time.  
  
And then it all came crashing down in messy, tear-filled anguish. That was unclear; it hadn’t been clear to Kotetsu at the time, and so that transfer of memory was fractured. Incomplete. There was alcohol involved, and Antonio had punched him. Demanded… something. Emotion. Why hadn’t he cried, why was he so distant, why were his eyes so dead— Dead. She’s dead, Kotetsu. She wouldn’t want you to die with her. The physical pain wasn’t even felt. It was nothing.  
  
 _Kotetsu_ was nothing. And then he was everything; an open wound. Sobbing, screaming, cursing deities, doctors, the hospital.  
  
The dreams never went beyond that point. Even though he knew that Kotetsu had certainly been haunted every day since, it was a little less obvious and a little more bearable by the day. It had been excruciating for quite a long time; but then it got better little by little. There was purpose again. It wasn’t that Tomoe was ever forgotten, or that the sadness of her loss, of a life cut far too short and denying their daughter more memories of her mother, ever truly faded. There were simply more positive things in the man’s life. Other “guiding lights”. Remembering a promise. Purpose.  
  
It was difficult to understand every emotion. Every concept. But when those dreams of crushing sadness invaded, he knew how to remind himself that it was not to last. Just a portion of time that was not his, though he somehow shared. Painful as it was, he was grateful for it, for the knowledge and experience that it offered him.  
  
He understood, inherently, that all things died. But to know the result so intimately—  
  
His _purpose_ was to do his best to make certain that he could prevent others from understanding the same.


End file.
